Inspiration.

For all I have to be thankful for I sometimes give into darkness, to worry and fretting. My mind takes off in its mercurial madness and panic starts to rise inside me. What am I to do in this crazy world? What is my path, where is it leading me? What can I do to quell the madness on this planet? I feel young and helpless. I feel lost.
But then, I breathe and remember that I am not alone in my thoughts. I remember to have vision and strength. I take out a poem by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and take in every word. It gives me hope. It feeds my soul. It inspires me.

We Were Made for These Times by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times.

I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking.

Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that.

There is a tendency too to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear.

Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?…

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.

It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing.

We know that it does not take “everyone on Earth” to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire.

To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.

If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do. There will always be times when you feel discouraged.

I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here.

The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here.

In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for. This comes with much love and a prayer that you remember who you came from, and why you came to this beautiful, needful Earth.

Leafless

The starkness of an east coast winter is startling to a northwest girl like myself. I remember similar images from my time in Vermont. After a few weeks of bright and stunning foliage it all falls off, leaving us with a skeletal view of the mountains. Hardly any evergreens to add lushness to the landscape. Bald giants line the hillsides and make one wonder if they'll ever be full again. Almost a cemetery for the dead leaves that once were.
February is a bleak month, full of a longing that has been building up since November. A restlessness nudges itself into our winter slumber. We long for Spring's provocative flirtations, full of eager buds and primary colored blossoms. Then we will begin to awake. Our eyes will be treated with a vision of leaves we have almost forgotten. Ripe and born again, flaunting blossoms and turning heads.
I am ready.

Narrative Essay

Since I have been doing school stuff lately I thought I would share my latest assignment. We were asked to write a narrative essay on a topic of our choosing. India was my choice, and the following is what I wrote. (be gentle...it's been 9 years since I've had to write an essay!!)




Being a blonde, blue eyed woman in India is like walking down the street topless in most American cities. You are sure to receive more attention than you have ever had in your life. Some is flattering, most is not, and all of it, after awhile, is less than welcome.
In 2004 my boyfriend Dustin and I went traveling together in Southeast Asia and India. The majority of our time (six months) was spent in India. Being that it was Dustin’s third trip back to the amazing country he gave me several bit of sage advice, one of them being dress appropriately. In India it is tradition that women do not bare their shoulders or legs, as doing so is considered very provocative. There are two traditional forms of dress India. One being the sari, a strip of unstitched fabric, either cotton or silk, ranging from four to nine meters in length and draped strategically over the body. The other is the far more casual Punjabi suit. It is a long embroidered tunic worn over baggy, tapered trousers and accessorized with a scarf. As beautiful as saris are they are quite complicated and cumbersome to take on and off, so I opted for simplicity. I donned the Punjabi most days we were out in public, and found them to be quite comfortable.
Despite my concerted efforts to be respectful and dress in traditional attire I still attracted an ample amount of attention. Some of it was quite understandable, especially when we were staying in smaller villages where the people had less exposure to tourists. But, the Indians are an inquisitive people to say the least, and even while we were traveling in more heavily populated areas I had a tendency to attract a crowd.
“Excuse me madam, autograph please.” said a beautiful Indian child who approached me at the Calcutta train station.
I looked behind me expecting to see some famous Bollywood star before realizing she was talking to me. It took awhile getting used to the fact that in this exotic and amazing country I was the one who was considered exotic. It was a strange feeling that I never quite got used to, but I adjusted as best I could. Adjusting to the attention from the male part of the population was not quite as easy.
The majority of Indian men are sexually repressed. This is due, in large part, to the strong tradition of arranged marriage in Indian culture. In this tradition there is little opportunity for dating or sexual contact before matrimony. I have also been told that their opinions of western women are influenced by high volumes of Scandinavian pornography films that circulate throughout the country. This combined with the fact that they have seen plenty of American, European and other western minded women walking around in shorts and tank tops makes most men in India come to one conclusion: western women are sluts who will most likely have sex with any man who approaches them. This mildly distressing and often demeaning factor made my travels in India, at times, quite challenging. I was traveling with a man which made things easier, but not as easy as I would have liked .
Most of the male attention I received came in the form of anonymous pinches and squeezes while walking in large crowds. Being that the population of India is over a billion I was walking in crowds most of the time. My butt was the main object of desire for most of the unseen molesters, but my breasts were targeted more than once. By the time I turned around in a rage to see who had violated me, my the perpetrator was usually lost in a sea of faces. Other times I was approached more directly, like the time a man asked me to join him for sex in the toilet on a train ride. His eager face looked down upon me, as if waiting for me to jump into his arms and skip ecstatically with him to the unspeakably filthy lavatory. Had I received this insane proposition in my everyday American life I would have laughed hysterically. Given the circumstances however, nary a giggle escaped from my lips. I was pissed off, and I had had enough. I was doing all that I could to try to respect the culture I was in, and in return I was being treated like a skank!
“Don’t take it so personally baby,” Dustin told me calmly on a train ride to Rajasthan in northwestern India. “I know it’s frustrating but just try to ignore it.”
Easy for him to say. Him with his enviably thin tank top feeling the cool breeze on his shoulders, while I was sweating away in what felt like a thousand layers of cotton . Still, I might as well have been wearing a string bikini the way I was being treated. I met another female traveler on that train who was all to familiar with my plight. She gave me some advice that I never forgot
“Mention their mothers,” she said with a sly look in her eye. “Indian men have a thing with their mothers and if you mention the mother to shame them I think you‘ll find it works wonders.”
I tried this approach the next week with successful results. A young man and his gaggle of friends were following me around the ancient city of Varanasi when he asked me, with a lustful and hopeful look in his eye, what I thought of Indian men. I turned my wrath upon him.
“Not very much!” I said angrily. “Would you treat your sisters this way?” I asked. “Would you treat your mother this way?!?!” I yelled more dramatically. A fearful look came into his eyes.
“Oh no madam!” he said in a whimper. “No, no madam. Begging your pardon.”
I walked away feeling righteous and vindicated and left them sulking guiltily behind me.
Even Dustin had his breaking point. At the end of our six months we were back in Calcutta awaiting a return flight to Thailand. It was the hot season and we left our stiflingly hot room at the guest house to take a walk through the slightly cooler night bazaar. We had been strolling no more than ten minutes when I felt the familiar feeling of someone squeezing my ass. Being that it was extremely hot outside my reaction time was slower than normal. Dustin’s however, was not. I turned around groggily looking for the culprit, but my man was already on the case. He ran behind me and grabbed an unassuming business man by the tie. The crowds parted around them. Anger is rarely taken out physically in Indian culture. You never see Indian men brawling like you would see men in our society. It is an extraordinary thing to witness, especially when a western man is involved. The crowd looked on in shock.
“ Did you just touch my wife asshole?!” yelled Dustin in the distressed man’s face.
“No sir, no sir.” said the Indian man sweating profusely. Dustin knew differently and dragged the man down the street by his tie until he was standing in front of me. He demanded that the culprit apologize. The man did so very awkwardly, avoiding my gaze and adjusting his tie as he spoke. I accepted his apology just as awkwardly, painfully aware of the hundreds of curious eyes staring at me from all angles. A large part of me wanted to disappear, to be lost in a sea of brown faces. But anonymity was not a gift I was blessed with in India. At least my blonde honor had been defended our last night in the country. My white ass had been vindicated for all to see, and I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t like it. I loved it.
Let me just say that I met many wonderful Indian men while traveling, and befriend some as well. India was the most amazing place I have ever been in my life and I will most definitely be returning there for more adventures. The unwelcome advances were just a small part of an incredible journey through a vast and ancient culture. Be that is it may, it made me appreciate being a random face in the crowd more than ever before. After nine months abroad we returned home to Oregon in the chilly month of November. My fellow north westerners were draped in the usual sweatshirts, raincoats, heavy jackets and other seasonally appropriate layers. I, on the other hand, promptly stripped down to my tiny little tank top which was accessorized with nothing but a mini skirt and flip flop sandals. In some parts of India I could have had rocks thrown at me for such atrocities. But in the good old Portland airport I was wonderfully and blissfully ignored. People stared straight ahead of them, unaware and unconcerned with the scantily clad girl just back from Asia. I may be an American slut to the majority of Indian men, but here I was in a vast sea of other American sluts, anonymous and free, and it felt fabulous.